"Acqua?” inquired the waiter at i’Buba, as I sat down with my family in the near-empty pizzeria at Punta Ala marina, Tuscany. Realising we weren’t Italian, he tried again: “De l’eau? Wasser?” Couldn’t he tell we were English? “Inglese,” I said as the menu arrived and he found the elusive word: “Water?”
It was half-term week, May 27 to be precise, yet the idea that an English-speaking family might be present clearly hadn’t occurred. Nor did English trip off the tongue in the other restaurants of Punta Ala, a bosky headland near Castiglione della Pescaia, where smart Italians go on holiday. So strong is their influence, hotel rates are geared more towards the Italian season than they are elsewhere in Tuscany – and the peaks don’t coincide with ours. By avoiding these times, British families can travel in the school holidays, avoid those controversial hefty fines for taking their children out of class, and still make savings – relatively small in August but significant in spring (see “Timing is all”, below).
That is why we ended up at Hotel Cala del Porto, a smart Relais & Châteaux property where there were no English-speaking satellite channels apart from MTV – more proof that the British are marginal on this forgotten stretch of coast between Pisa and the tourist honeypots of the Costa d’Argento and the Maremma Natural Park. Back at Gatwick, the departure gate for Pisa had been rammed with British schoolchildren, some rowdy but for the most part lobotomised by playing Minecraft on their iPads. At Pisa airport, many leapt into hire cars with their parents and headed for the hills (a villa in Volterra, Lari or San Gimignano) or boarded coaches to the city and its improbable leaning tower.
Others, like us, headed south on the E80 past Livorno, Cecina, Venturina and Piombino, the departure point for ferries to Elba. While most surged on towards Grosseto, in the heart of the Maremma, we took a right turn shortly after Follonica, a cheap-and-cheerful tourist town on which Italians descend in their thousands in summer. Maremmans like to call it “Miami in Tuscany”.
Punta Ala, a few miles farther south, could not be more different. Leaving the main road, you skirt a cool, shady glade of pines where the smell of damp, sandy humus and sweet resin calls to mind the French Riviera. Through the trees you glimpse secluded wooden chalets, smart residences, woodland gymnasiums, tennis courts, an equestrian centre and private beach clubs. If Follonica is the Miami of Tuscany, Punta Ala is the Newport, Rhode Island.
The pool at Hotel Cala del Porto
Nowhere is this more evident than at the marina, where racing yachts rather than floating gin palaces set the tone. On our first evening, before that faltering start at i’Buba, we strolled along the pontoons and ogled the boats with their broad, uncluttered decks, immaculately furled ropes and titanic winches. As the light faded, a man was raking the sand of the small public beach at the end of the marina and dragging sunbeds out of winter storage. A cool breeze buffeted the headland and the sky was streaked with rain clouds. Had we done the right thing coming here before summer had begun?
There was a melancholy out-of-season feel, with only a handful of restaurants open. I’Buba was one of them, a pizzeria founded in 1974 with a menu pretty much unchanged since then. The white-haired owner waited at table and brought us an antipasto of cold meats, followed by mains of stewed octopus with boiled potatoes, handmade ravioli and a perfectly al dente risotto laced with prawns, clams and baby squid. It was hardly haute cuisine but proof that you can take pot luck in Italy and not be disappointed.
The gourmet treat came next day at the Cala del Porto beach club, a 15-minute walk from the hotel down lanes fragrant with oleander, then along a quiet coastal track with pine forest and audible surf on one side and ploughed fields, backed by rolling hills, on the other. We stopped for a drink at the Polo Beach bar where tables were set out in the shade in a grassy paddock. In the next field, a tractor harvested wheat and disturbed clouds of insects, attracting hoopoes and other birds looking for of an easy meal. I had never before seen agriculture and the sea so harmoniously juxtaposed.
So it was on the menu at La Spiaggia, Cala del Porto’s elegant pavilion a few strides from the sand. We feasted on parma ham and blood-red bresaola with sweet, amber melon from nearby Pian d’Alma; spaghetti with briny clams, mussels and cherry tomatoes presented in a ceramic boat; lamb cutlets with a salad of astringent, peppery rocket; chargrilled prawns with Asian spicing; and a sorbet served in a hollowed-out, frost-spangled lemon.
On the beach afterwards, any concerns about the weather quickly evaporated. It was a comfortable 25C in the winnowing coastal breeze but stupefyingly hot lying flat on a sunlounger. As we looked out on a sapphire-blue sea criss-crossed by speedboats, with the spinnakers of yachts blooming in the straits between Punta Ala and the low-slung island of Elba, waiters brought prosecco and canapés to a handful of Cala del Porto guests. The waterskiing rafts were being prepared, and a tractor – a Lamborghini, naturally – was clearing seaweed from the beach in readiness for the season.
At the marina, racing yachts rather than floating gin palaces set the tone
Locals say Punta Ala has its own benign microclimate, but the British have not discovered it yet. Even in Castiglione della Pescaia, a tourist trap with a medieval citadel, Renaissance churches and cobbled streets lined with restaurants, wine shops and perfumeries, we heard few English voices. It was Saturday, market day, and the place was busy but not nerve-rackingly so. Unusually, it rained and we took refuge in Dal Bucaniere for a heart-warming lunch of cacciucco (the local fish stew), pici (hand-rolled pasta, like thick spaghetti) with a wild boar ragout (another local favourite), and a bottle of Bolgheri red.
By the time we arrived back at Hotel Cala del Porto, the sun was shining and we were greeted by a blast of intense summer fragrance from the roses and honeysuckle flanking the driveway. The hotel’s trademark figure-of-eight swimming pool, perfectly maintained and shaded by palms and umbrella pines, beckoned. There were one or two English couples by the pool, none of them with children, but most were French, Spanish or German.
On our final evening in Punta Ala, we strolled down to the marina to find a regatta in progress. As we watched the sleek yachts glide into harbour after the race, there was a party atmosphere and a distinct rise in tempo. The waterside bars and restaurants were filled with crews in their bright sailing gear, and well-heeled spectators who had come to watch. It was May 31, the beginning of the Italian school holidays that last for the whole of June, July and August, and thousands of Tuscans were about to descend on Punta Ala.
When we checked out in the early afternoon of June 1, every room at Cala del Porto was occupied and we had to shower and change in a bathroom in the basement. Our tranquil refuge had been transformed overnight into a lively and much sought-after place filled with immaculately dressed Italians.
On the drive to Pisa, the roads were noticeably busier and the smaller towns choked with traffic. In Pisa itself, where we stopped to see the tower, we felt we had finally caught up with the English schoolchildren who had filled the departure lounge at Gatwick the previous week. There they were, taking selfies with the tower or Duomo in the background and treading all over the billiard-baize grass. For a week it had seemed like we had Tuscany to ourselves, but the half-term hordes had been here in force, iPads included.
EasyJet (0330 365 5000; easyjet.com) flies to Pisa from Bristol, Gatwick and Luton airports with one-way fares starting at £26.49.
Hotel Cala del Porto (0039 0564 922455; baglionihotels.com/caladelporto) has rooms from €285/£225 per night, b&b, based on two adults sharing and including VAT and Wi-Fi.
Timing is all
For those with children who can only travel in the school holidays, Punta Ala and the central Tuscan coast are a prudent choice. Rooms are likely to be available – and cheaper – during May half term, the third week of July (when British children have just finished school), the last 10 days of August and the first week in September (the end of the UK school summer holidays). Italians descend en masse in the last week of July, and most go home after Ferragosto, the public holiday on August 15 that marks the return to work.
In early August 2014, preceding the Ferragosto, rooms at Hotel Cala del Porto start at €532/£422 per night. After Ferragosto, they drop to €481/£382, so a family sharing a room, as we did, can save around €360/£285 on a seven-night stay. In the spring half term, potential savings double. For late May 2015 the hotel quotes a lead-in rate of €290/£230 per room per night, rising to €390/£310 once the Italian school holidays begin in June. That’s a saving of €700/£554 per week for a family sharing.
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